The 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy franchise has featured many of the most breathtaking settings in the history of the gaming medium. Few entries in Square's bestselling series have ever maintained a standardized aesthetic, so the games have mostly been free to flex the imaginative powers of their particular artists and graphics designers. The result is a veritable who's-who of stunning cities and biomes.
That said, we can't always get what we want. For all the eye candy we have received, there are still several faraway places in Final Fantasy lore that we've never had the chance to explore firsthand. Here's to you, enigmatic zones - we bet you'd blow our minds, if only we could see you.
7 💧 ꧑ Final Fantasy 3: The Dark World
As the last of the NES trilogy, Final Fantasy 3 largely delivers despite the relative technical limitations of the day, presenting us with the world as we think we know it only to peel back the layers of mystery later on. The result is a neat revelation - our four heroes have lived on a floating island in the sky of a larger planet they didn't even know existed.
Furthermore, there's the late-game twist that in addition to our World of Light, there's a World of Darkness. The exacts of it all can get a bit confusing, but the gist is easy to understand. Your own dimension must use the power of light to prevent darkness from engulfing everything; similarly, another dimension has tapped into the power of darkness to prevent light from doing the same.
We briefly meet the four Warꦜriors of Darkness, too, but alas, we never step foot upon their homeland. What might their home have been like, long before the forces of light overwhelmed it? At least we can be thankful the FF14 team reimagined aspects of this and gave us their own version of an answer to that burning question.
6 ꦇ Final Fantasy 9: The Elemental Shrines
Don't get us wrong, FF9's plenty long as-is. The PlayStation FFs are well known for their especially meaty main adventures. Not every character in Final Fantasy 9 gets the full spotlight they might deserve, it could be argued, but few would claim the game is short.
Which is why we're not terribly surprised that the four elemental shrines, a third-disc quartet of would-be quests, is reduced to a single boss fight and a handful of cutscenes. Adding four more full-fledged dungeons might have nipped away at the game's lovely array of unique locales, like Ipsen's Castle and the Desert Palace.
We get it, but the thing is, Final Fantasy 9 is in many ways a love letter to the earliest entries in the series. These shrines are clearly modeled in notion after the first game's core dungeons. Square missed a trick when we didn't get to explore a 32-bit rendition of the oldest of old-school odes.
5 Final Fantasy Tactꦕics: Ordallia
Final Fantasy's plethora of neat settings is matched by a nearly-as-vast abundance of unique tones and subgenres within the series. Enter Yasumi Matsuno, whose success with early 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ogre Battle RPGs helped usher him in as the chief creative force behind Final Fantasy Tactics, a dark f👍antasy political thriller of a strategy spinoff set within the de🐲eply medieval realm of Ivalice.
While Ivalice has become a household name among FF fans through the years, Ordallia has not - and there's so much unexplored territory to the place, literally and figuratively. Ordallia is a separate kingdom to the east of Ivalice, a nation that waged a five-decade war against the Ivalicians. The aftershocks of this bloody conflict form the veritable backbone of FFT's premise.
But what is Ordallia like, truly? Few can say. Even if the relative proximity of the two countries means the land itself isn't all that varied - and for all we know, that's hardly even the case - any fan of Matsuno's contributions to the series would treasure the chance to see how 'the other side' goes about their lives. We'd be willing to bet there's a tale just waiting to be told out there.
4 ﷺ ꧒Final Fantasy 10: Bevelle
Bevelle's a weird one, right? It's the spiritual capital of the world in Final Fantasy 10, and given how deeply religious people tend to be in that game, that basically makes Bevelle the capital in every other sense as well.
It's the biggest city in Spira, and between the original game and its Yuna-starring sequel, we see it from above, we see it from the side, we explore a temple within its depths, we fully map out its underground, we have a few cutscenes in very specific portions of it... but we never, ever explore it as a city.
To some, that might be enough that you'll find yourselves wondering why Bevelle's on our list. But seriously, wouldn't you have liked to get a glimpse at its residencies, its shops, its cultural downtown-like proverbial beating heart? Bevelle is forever just out of our reach, and it's frustrating.
3 Final Fantasy𒀰 14: The New World 🔯
Final Fantasy 14's talented team of developers have taken thorough advantage of its status as an MMO to explore its setting to an extent that none of the single-player games can accomplish. From the realm of Eorzea outward to multiple additional contents, the world of Hydaelyn has revealed many of its secrets to us through the years.
Yet far to Eorzea's west lies the New World, a fairly obvious fantasy stand-in for, well, the New World on Earth. This mysterious not-the-Americas landmass is the ancestral home of the Mamool Ja beastmen, as well as a tribe of Hyur r🧸esponsible for the creation of Blue Magic.
The American allegories are, to be blunt, a little thick - big crop imports from the New World include pumpkins and tomatoes, and an Eorzean traveler is responsible for spreading a devastating plague to the natives - but we're willing to bet the FF14 writers are hiding some nifty storytelling for us out there, and we hope an expansion eventually shows us more.
2 Finalꦫ Fantasy 12: Rozarria
We're back to the Yasumi Matsuno side of the series with Final Fantasy 12, another game set in the Ivalician timeline that was first introduced through Final Fantasy Tactics. 168澳💜洲幸运5开奖网:FF12 is set many centuries pr꧅ior to that game, and the landmass known as Ivalice is considerably larger at the time, but that didn't stop Matsuno and FF12's other writers from tantalizing us with references to places beyond our ability to see firsthand.
Chief among them is the land of Rozarria. We meet only two representatives of this important (and vast!) area, the politically savvy Al-Cid Margrace and his dutiful assistant. But Al-Cid's efforts to keep the peace between the Archadian Empire and his own Rozarrian Empire are a vital part of the political playing field in FF12, and the threat of war between the two great powers is deeply unsettling for our Ivalician main characters.
Al-Cid's Spanish accent suggests the possibility that the Rozarrian Empire's designer inspirations include the fascinating history of real-world Spain, and we bet FF12's artists could have painted us a gorgeous picture of what exactly that looks like. Alas, the capital of Ambervale shall forever be outside our reach as fans.
1 ꦉF💞inal Fantasy 15: Tenebrae
Final Fantasy 15 does a bang-up job fully realizing the Kingdom of Lucis, giving the game's celebrated open-world portion a worthy backdrop. It might not be the most diverse landscape in RPG history, but then, it's a single landmass. Many of FF15's fans cite its road trip approach as its greatest quality.
First-time players often have high hopes that Lucis isn't the only open area in Final Fantasy 15, especially when the game's multimedia project approach to production had already given us glances at faraway places like the imperial province of Tenebrae before we ever booted up a fresh file. The prequel movie, Kingsglaive, briefly reveals a lush, evergreen land of wonder that would have complemented Lucis' more rugged grandeur and made for a more fulfilling experience.
Alas, the only part of Tenebrae the player can visit in Final Fantasy 15 is its train station. Here, you'll find some lodging, a restaurant, a shop, and uh... that's about it. Even FF15's most ardent fans tend to agree the game's filled with missed opportunities, and not getting to see Lunafreya's homeland firsthand might take the cake.